Aftermath
by The Loud Guy
Summary: In the wake of Shiro being returned to his body, the black paladin seeks to return to life as he knows it, and then is forced to grapple with the idea that this is impossible. Allura, unknowing, begins to believe that whatever plagues him is a result of her weakness. A sequel of sorts to We All Need to Talk to Shiro. Season 6 spoilers, Season 7 foreshadowing. Written for a request.


The interior of the Blue Lion was quiet, restive, the gentle vibration of its engines faded to a low hum as it idled, resting as the Black Lion towed it. It gave the impression that it was sleeping, Allura thought; she did not say this to anyone. Coran would find it endearing in an infuriating way, and the other paladins would laugh at her.

Well. Maybe not Shiro. She might mention it to him.

Her own footsteps were loud in the silence, hard bootheels tapping out a staccato rhythm against the interior corridors as she walked the short distance from the cockpit to the storage room where Shiro would be taking his rest. Well, not rest, she corrected herself. He would be preparing. He was finally feeling well enough to try to exercise, and for him exercising usually meant combat drills. That's why she was in her armor, why she expected him to be in it, why she was fighting down a hard-to-place anxiety as she stood outside of the room.

She knocked. "Shiro?"

"Just… just a second." His voice was strained, not quite in distress but in that range where he might be in distress momentarily.

Two women jockeyed for position in Allura's mind: the princess imagined that Shiro was not yet dressed, and that she should wait until she was bidden to come in, both for propriety and for their mutual dignity. The paladin, though, she heard the quaver in his voice, sensed it as signifying danger, and felt an urge to smash the door in and extricate Shiro from whatever that danger may have been. The paladin's urge was greater.

Allura compromised by opening the door. "My apologies, Shiro, I… Oh!"

He was half-dressed, naked from the waist up. The upper half of his armor was on the floor, next to the cot that he had folded and set against the wall. Shiro himself was leaning against the wall, bent forward at the waist, using his left arm to try to push himself into a standing position. He was covered in sweat, so much it was dripping onto the floor under him. His arm was shaking, and for a second Allura thought she was going to see him fall over or faint.

Instead he looked up at her and grinned, an apologetic and rueful look that reached inside of her chest and twisted. "Sorry, Princess. I'm going to need a minute."

She did not give him a minute; she stepped into the room, unmindful of his grimace, and set up the cot again. She grabbed him by his shoulders, gently guiding him to sit down, then crouched in front of him. He made eye contact with her, plainly embarrassed, and she did not have time for that. "We will not be doing drills today," she said, trying to make it sound like an order.

He grimaced again, was still disoriented enough that it took him a minute to reach for his words.

"You may agree with me now, if you wish, or you may choose to agree with Coran after I have him decide whether or not to restrain you."

That got him to look up, eyes wide with shock. "You wouldn't."

"I wouldn't. Coran might. Now stay right here for a moment." Without waiting for his assent she rose, retrieved his armor from the floor, and put it in its place on the simple shelf on the other side of the room. "Out of respect for your dignity I will not ask you to remove the rest of your armor now, but I expect you to dress more comfortably at your earliest convenience."

"You mean as soon as you leave," he said, not looking up. He was still sweating.

"Precisely." She walked back to him, knelt in front of him again, removed her gauntlets and put her hands on either side of his face. He pulled his head back, grimacing more deeply, and she knew it was out of embarrassment at the clamminess of his skin, at her touching his sweat, but she gently hooked the tips of her middle fingers behind his jaw to grip him more solidly.

Emotion rebounded between them, the quiet awareness and understanding that the two of them had shared ever since she had carried him inside of her, since she had placed him in this new body. His shame and embarrassment and anxiety intermingled with her own fears, her own need to protect him, to shield him, to make sure that he was well.

Such honesty, unspoken and unavoidable, made holding back one's thoughts a kind of quaint absurdity.

"I worry," she said as her hands glowed and she poured herself into him, "that I have made some critical error. When I placed you in this body, I… I treated it as if it were your own. I did not account for the small differences that would crop up in a cloned form." The feeling of pouring power into him, trying to speed his healing process, was a little like getting blood drawn; warm, in a disorienting way, as if she were falling. Funny that there was no real difference in feeling between healing a man Shiro's size versus healing on the scale of the Balmera.

He looked at her, realization and a new concern blossoming inside of him like an opening flower. He had stopped shaking, now, and his breathing had slowed. "I don't think you did anything wrong. It's… a verycarefully reconstructed body. Every scar is where it should be. Every particular quirk I remember is there, exactly as they were before I fought Zarkon."

"That's almost as frightening," she said, and she shouldn't be saying this to him but he would feel it from her anyway, just as she felt him. "Because… Shiro, you should be healing faster than this. Your strength should be back, but it's like there's a separate level of injury that I can't touch. It feels like I'm trying to reinforce a building where the foundations are constantly moving." I think that I did this, somehow.

His hand was cool and dry as he placed it on hers. "You shouldn't worry about that," he said. Now he was sure, radiating confidence, radiating a sense of rightness so sharp and so honed that it was like a physical force more than a psychic one. "Bodies are just funny sometimes, Allura. I promise that this is nothing you did. OK? I just need time."

There, at the end, he was lying to her. Only at the very end. She looked at him, and she wasn't hurt, but she didn't understand, and he radiated confidence back at her. This was all she was going to get. This was all there was, for now.

He did not take his hand from hers. She finished, pouring as much of her strength into him as she could spare, then let her other hand fall away. She was tired, though it was not a physical feeling. "That's all that I can do for you, for now."

"Thank you," he said. He put pressure on her hand, pressing it more firmly against his jaw, and she felt the working of the muscle and bone, the beating of his heart, as he spoke. "You've done more than I could have asked for. More than I ever thought anyone could do for me."

He was telling the truth.

He let go of her hand. She got up, lowered him onto the cot. He went down without argument or struggle, though he did not close his eyes or try to sleep.

Allura stepped out of the room. She looked back at him, in silence, and wondered.

She shut the door.


End file.
